This evening, while the sun was shining with all his evening glory on Susan Merton's house, Meadows went slowly to his window and pulled down the blind, and drawing his breath hard shut the loved prospect out. He then laid his hand upon the table, and he said: “I swear by the holy bread and wine I took last month that I will not put myself in the way of this strong temptation. I swear I will go no more to Grassmere Farm, never so long as I love Susan.” He added faintly, “Unless they send for me, and they won't do that, and I won't go of my own accord, I swear it. I have sworn it, however, and I swear it again--unless they send for me!” Then he sat by the fire with his head in his hands--a posture he never was seen in before. Next he wrote a note and sent it hastily with a horse and cart to that small whitewashed cottage. Old Mrs. Meadows sat in her doorway reading a theological work called “Believers' Buttons.” She took the note, looked at it. “Why, this is from John, I think; what can he have to say to me?” She put on her spectacles again, which she had taken off on the messenger first accosting her, and deliberately opened, smoothed and read the note. It ran thus: “Mother, I am lonely. Come over and stay awhile with me, if you please. “Your dutiful son, JOHN MEADOWS” “Here, Hannah,” cried the old woman to a neighbor's daughter that was nearly always with her. Hannah, a comely girl of fourteen, came running in. “Here's John wants me to go over to his house. Get me the pen and ink, girl, out of the cupboard, and I'll write him a word or two any way.--Is there anything amiss?” said she quickly to the man. “He came in with the black mare all in a lather, just after dinner, and he hasn't spoke to a soul since. That's all I know, missus. I think something has put him out, and he isn't soon put out, you know, he isn't.” Hannah left the room, after placing the paper as she was bid. “You will all be put out that trust to an arm of flesh, all of ye, master or man, Dick Messenger,” said the disciple of John Wesley somewhat grimly. “Ay, and be put out of the kingdom of heaven, too, if ye don't take heed.” “Is that the news I'm to take back to Farnborough, missus?” said Messenger with quiet, rustic irony. “No; I'll write to him.” The old woman wrote a few lines reminding Meadows that the pursuit of earthly objects could never bring any steady comfort, and telling him that she should be lost in his great house--that it would seem quite strange to her to go into the town after so many years' quiet--but that if he was minded to come out and see her she would be glad to see him and glad of the opportunity to give him her advice, if he was in a better frame for listening to it than last time she offered it to him, and that was two years come Martinmas. Then the old woman paused, next she reflected, and afterward dried her unfinished letter. And as she began slowly to fold it up and put it in her pocket--“Hannah,” cried she thoughtfully.